Egypt (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Port Said Braces for Protests After Court Verdicts

Soldiers stand guard in front of the Security Directorate on Friday (Photo: Reuters)

See also Syria Live Coverage: Regime Shelling Prevents Release of 21 UN Peacekeepers
Saudi Arabia Feature: The Protests in the Central Cities
Friday's Egypt (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Policemen on Strike

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1715 GMT: Egypt. Three people have now been killed in clashes in Cairo, following the verdicts handed down over the Port Said football deaths, is now three.

An eight-year-old child and a worker were found dead inside Omar Makram mosque near CTahrir Square. Both were killed by birdshot during fighting near Qasr El-Nil Bridge.

Ambulance personnel refused to transport the corpses to the morgue, leaving them at the mosque instead.

1625 GMT: Egypt. Back from a Saturday day to find that a protester has been killed by tear gas inhalation near Qasr El-Nil Bridge in Cairo.

Fadel Ahmed Abdel-Qader, 36, died after he was transferred to Qasr El-Eini Hospital suffering from breathing problems.

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Saudi Arabia Feature: The Protests in the Central Cities (Perazzo)

In recent months, however, protests in the central cities of Qassim and Riyadh have become more frequent. In January 2013, a group of 11 women and children were arrested for demonstrating in front of the Board of Grievances in Buraida, a town in Qassim. In February 2013, 50 more women were arrested in Riyadh and Qassim. Finally, in the first week of March, more than 170 men, women, and children were arrested in Buraida after organizing a sit-in in front of the Bureau of Investigation and Public Prosecution. A spokesman for the Buraida police reported that one hundred protesters have been released, According to Saudi activists, several female demonstrators remain unaccounted for.

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Saudi Arabia Feature: The Professor on Trial for Speaking Out (Lippmann)

Mohammad Al-Qahtani (Photo: Hassan Ammar/Toronto Star)What are the limits of free speech and open dissent in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? They are often unclear and seemingly arbitrary, but there is no doubt that Dr. Mohammad al-Qahtani, a professor and activist, went well beyond them, and he knew it. He was hardly surprised when Saudi prosecutors, finally fed up with his vociferous denunciations of the regime, hit him with a long list of criminal charges. He had predicted it, and in the context of Saudi Arabia, he was asking for it.

“Make no mistake,” he said shortly before a recent procedural hearing on his case. “We are all going to prison.” By “we” he meant himself and two colleagues in the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association, perhaps the most outspoken and daring agitators for human rights and personal freedom in the kingdom.

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Saudi Arabia Analysis: A Kingdom in Trouble? (Fakhro)

A demonstration on Saturday at King Khalid University, protesting conditions and the arrest of female students

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The reality for most Saudis is far-removed from the Kingdom’s reputation for extravagance. Official unemployment stands at 10 percent, but unofficial estimates place it as high as 20 percent. The latest official figures reveal that 670,000 families—approximately 3 million out of a total population of 18 million—live in poverty. Nor is hardship restricted to rural areas: a recent documentary on poverty in Riyadh, Maloub Alayna (The Joke’s on Us) recorded testimonies of families living on one meal a day, with as many as twenty people living in the same home.

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